Title: Vice President, Investment Banker
Firm: HilltopSecurities
Age: 27
Claire Merritt works for HilltopSecurities in the booming town of Austin, Texas, where she specializes in affordable housing — always a complicated topic.
Many of her clients finance affordable housing through private activity bonds coupled with federal 4% housing tax credits. Since states are limited in the amount of PABs that can be issued each year, Texas is typically oversubscribed. Luckily, Claire came up with a solution.
"To help combat this issue and assist our clients' affordable housing goal, we pivoted to different financing structures," she said, "either through the use of issuing essential function tax-exempt bonds which require no allocation of PAB or through the use of the conventionally financed workforce housing model where our client is the general partner and are provided a property tax abatement to subsidize the affordable rents."
Thinking creatively in the housing finance world has helped Claire execute over 200 transactions for a total par amount of approximately $5 billion. Her expertise has made her the firm's go-to expert and a recognized leader in the industry for creating and implementing the comprehensive housing-related financial models which are now considered to be best practice.
Claire takes satisfaction working on an issue that everybody agrees need a solution, but nobody has solved.
The results are the best reward. "Seeing the projects we have participated in come to life and provide a true benefit in the lives of residents that have struggled navigating through the affordable housing crisis makes it worthwhile," she said.
Claire, a Texas native who graduated from the University of Texas-Austin with a B.A. in economics, is engaged to be married.
While in college she was selected for two internships at Hilltop which is where she first became familiar with housing finance. She accepted a position with the firm in 2017.
